Month: November 2013

We recently received a new dehydrator as a donation from Fresh Choice Kitchens to support our community kitchens. The photos below show the group making fruit leather and kale chips. As you can see the kids especially like this food.

The Grandview Woodland Food Connection is pleased to have participated in the 3rd Annual Sustenance Festival held this past October city-wide throughout Vancouver. Sustenance provides an important opportunity for food security groups across the city to collaborate in presenting workshops and events highlighting the diversity of programming and food and issues within our communities. A big thanks to everyone who participated.

Many of you have heard the news lately of the Liberal government’s proposal to restructure ALR lands to make it easier for non-agricultural resource development – read oil and gas. We are at a critical historical point on this planet and MUST siginificantly shift our reliance on fossil fuels and stop corporate capitalism from eroding the ALR and further destroying our planet.

Check out the Globe and Mail from Nov 7th.

British Columbia’s “sacrosanct” Agricultural Land Commission will be effectively dismantled and the B.C. Oil and Gas Commission will assume new responsibilities for land use decisions if a proposal prepared for cabinet is adopted, according to confidential government documents.

This past summer a visiting delegation of Korean food activists and academics dropped by the Britannia School Food Garden formally known as BUG (Britannia Urban food Garden) and now known as Nexway’s wa lh7ay’nexw or transformed Life in the Coast Salish language to learn about our school garden and the various urban agriculture projects here in Vancouver. It was an honor to host these visitors who were very interested in the Vancouver urban agriculture model. After all, we are known to be a world leader in urban agriculture and indeed our Vancouver Food Strategy is very progressive.

However, it could also be argued that Seoul’s urban agriculture system is far larger than Vancouver’s with over 150 gardens as compared to Vancouver’s 75 and some 828 hectares of agricultural land according to a Seoul government document. Seoul too is becoming a global leader in urban agriculture and as a goal is setting out to create a plot for each household in Seoul. And really this is not surprising given the long agricultural history of Korea.

And there are differences between our systems. The Korean visitors were particularly interested in our emphasis on community gardens as community builders and as spaces for community engagement, inclusion and socialization. Here in Vancouver, community gardening is perhaps understood within a more holistic framework and meeting other social, spiritual, and emotional needs. In Korea, the objective is still very much food production only, or so our Korean visitors explained.

In the photo below, our Korean visitors also had the opportunity to meet Frank Martin and his wife. Both are wonderful community members who have lived around east van for many years. Frank carved our garden sign and both have participated in classroom learning at Britannia School.